Desire

What place is this
where a keening urge revisits
with such intensity
despite no real self knowledge
or sense of the other?
Whence comes it?
What bodes it?
Where goes it?

It brings a mild panic
the kind that accompanies
the unknown.

What guessing
when feeling takes over
and primal senses lead the way.

On the one hand,
sure knowledge
that a casual affair
simply will not mesh
with the parochial past,
the schoolgirl steered by nuns
the one-man-woman
at the end of a thirty-year marriage
with no other sense of a man
than the one who failed her.

This feels
a leap
an abyss
a crevasse
a depth uncharted
with no clear egress,
and yet,

a hint of promise--
down the road not yet taken.